For starters let’s remember that the main character in our story lived in an overwhelmingly violent culture. Through both Jesus’ teachings and life the gospel books address violence as much as any topic. Perhaps our faith has something to say about it after all.

Humanities response to violence is habitually to meet violence with violence. We stop killing by killing, prevent war through arming ourselves for it, and respond to horrific firearms abuses through making guns more available. But is using violence ever a good thing?

In The Gospel Next Door, Marty displays his wares as a wordsmith, theologian and optometrist. Marty is simply good with words, and his writing helps free the reader from a Christian culture that is either made too shallow by cheap clichés or too lofty by folks who use big words. To help unfetter our Christian imaginations, Marty reminds us that Dr. King changed the world not with “I have a plan,” but with “I have a dream.” He walks his readers through stories of Christians in Houston who imagined a different reality in our city because of their relationship with God. …

It is a long road from the party of Lincoln, from the party with 24 African-American Congressmen before 1900, to a party best embodied in the person of Donald Trump. Yet if anyone appreciated the fragility of the Union and the threat of depraved leadership, it was Lincoln himself.Trump
In facing the reality of Trump, we would do well to listen to Lincoln’s address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, IL. It was the place of Lincoln’s famous prophecy: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” In his speech concerning the fragile Union, Lincoln envisions a leader readied to profit from our nation’s depravity and whose main concern was his own distinction. Lincoln cautioned that such a politician might manipulate our nation’s moral bankruptcy into a dangerous mob spirit. …

The significance of the Hawkins vs. Wheaton College Administration divorce was not primarily about how to articulate the intricate relationship between the Abrahamic faiths. That was only the tip of the iceberg, and it is not the iceberg’s tip that sinks ships.

The significance of the divorce was the demonstration of Christians’ inability to relate to one another across racial divides. When Hawkins, a daughter of the Black church, sought to remain in solidarity with her Muslim brothers, the administration refused to stand with her—for solidarity was not one of Wheaton’s theological virtues.